There is no fire-fighting in this game. Only fire-watching. Respect the restraint.

As an adult male that begrudgingly accepts the label “gamer” — I play them regularly, I follow the latest releases — my favorite movement in games right now is toward shorter, more focused narrative games. Games that steer away from grand adventure and intense action and tell intimate interactive stories. Games that feel like they’re made by adults, and for an adult sensibility; games that don’t require lightning reflexes or hours of dedication to enjoy or excel in. Gone Home, Her Story, SOMA, and The Beginner’s Guide are some of my favorite recent examples, and now currently, Firewatch.

The setup: main character Henry flees a difficult relationship situation to work in a fire lookout tower for the park service in Wyoming. It’s beautiful, isolated, and lonely, but for his boss and eventual friend Delilah on the other end of the handheld radio.

Playing the game consists of exploring your patch of forest, dealing with minor problems (some which later become major ones), and getting to know the woman on the other end of the radio as you do your jobs. There’s some excitement, definitely some mystery and tension, but no fighting, racing, collecting, or puzzle-solving like other games you might play. You can’t die or lose. You can’t even jump.

But it’s moving, it’s human, it’s beautiful both visually (the scenery, lighting and color palettes are spectacular) and emotionally. It feels grown-up, which so few video games manage to do. And at least for me, it made me think about my life and my relationships, which almost no games do. So, based on the big-boy ideas dealt with in Firewatch, two topics for discussion*:

(*saving the others that might spoil surprises in the game)

Henry takes the job as a fire lookout to get away from a tough relationship, needing time to think and sort out his life.

Why do we associate going out into nature with figuring out our lives?
Aside from quiet and lack of distraction, what are we looking for when we “get away from it all”?
Aside from nice landscapes that make good photos, what is the emotional benefit of “natural beauty”?

Henry “meets” Delilah over the radio, and for the rest of the game she’s really your only other point of human contact.

Have you ever become friends with someone you’d never met in person?
How did they become your friend?
How was your friendship with them different than with people you have met?

Some messages are subtler than others.

You can play The Beginner’s Guide in a couple hours, tops. Playing it feels unlike playing any game you’ve played, because there aren’t really objectives to complete or decisions to make and there’s definitely no way to win or lose. The most accurate description of TBG I could come up with is calling it the world’s first interactive critical essay on video games; a game built to explore what games mean to their creators and the people who play them.

The conceit is that the narrator (the maker of the “actual” game you’re playing) is taking you on a guided tour of a bunch of half-finished game ideas created by a fellow game designer he admires. The thrust of the conversation focuses on how games reflect the ideas and personalities of their creators. The biggest point of contention is this: creating for the sake of creating is a pure act — personal, private expression — and then once anything is shared with an audience, the work inherently changes. There are expectations the audience brings to the work, there are interpretations and assumptions made about the work, and ultimately a whole new set of demands made on the creator of the work.

The interactive mode of exploring this idea makes for a very novel, very engaging exploration of the creative process. I loved going on this journey. But I liked it most for being one big exercise in examining my relationship with any of the creative works I enjoy.

Does creativity inherently lose something when it’s shared? Does it require an audience, or change as soon as an audience gets involved?

For things you’ve made, how do you factor in the audience while making those things?

For things you’ve enjoyed as an audience member, what, if anything, do you feel the creator owes you as a creator? Is that a fair exchange?

If they key art for the game can spoil a plot twist, I certainly can.

SOMA is a game that’s hard to talk about without getting into specifics, and there’s nothing more insufferable than talking around something in an attempt to “avoid spoilers”, and thereby talking a lot without really saying anything at all. So there’s that.

On its surface, SOMA is a scary haunted house game set in an undersea research facility where you have to find a way out of the nightmare you’re trapped in, both literally and metaphorically. But really, SOMA is a game about consciousness. And if it weren’t more about that than running from monsters in a dark dank creepy maze at the bottom of the ocean, it would not be a very interesting game at all. In fact I would be just as happy to think and talk about the version of this game with no monsters at all. The monsters are not the point.

Some things a thoughtful person will ask themselves as they play this game include: Is putting a broken-but-still-living thing out of its misery an act of mercy or cruelty? Does this machine feel pain, and is that pain different than “real” pain I would feel guilt for inflicting on a person? Does a form of intelligence not based in traditional human biology have the same right to exist and propagate that we do?

But the biggest questions are about what it means to be human. In a future where consciousness can be transplanted — where our minds have the chance to continue after our frail human bodies, and the earth they occupy, are no longer sustainable — it’s up to us to decide if that’s an action worth taking.

The designers employ a clever trick to force us to confront this directly. At several points in the game, the player comes across kiosks with seemingly benign survey questions about what it feels like to be taken from your original body; about what it means to be untethered from the physical anchor we’re used to.

The questions don’t change over time, but based on the actions you’ve taken and what you’ve been through between these points in the game, you may find yourself reevaluating your responses. It’s tough to say you don’t want to go on when you’ve fought so hard not to give up. What may seem like sweet release viewed from the outside might be a torturous end when it’s your turn. Deciding between a false reality and none at all isn’t much of a choice.

If you could live on beyond your body by putting your mind into a mechanical host, would you?

Would it be better or worse to upload your consciousness to a simulation (like in The Matrix) and leave bodies behind altogether?

How do you think you would feel different in either of these situations, given that you are 100% aware of what’s changed?